The exhibition, which will run until March 6, features a variety of inventions and new technology developed by China's scientific community over the past 15 years.

Many of these achievements, which involve 230 research themes in six industries, lead the international field - one of the most striking examples being the 1998 discovery of a human gene which affects hearing impairment.

The project has yielded more than 2,000 patents in high technology since being initiated in March 1986, according to a spokesperson from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST), the chief co-ordinator of the project.

Late leader Deng Xiaoping gave crucial backing to the project at a time when China saw itself as alienated by other scientific superpowers in a broad range of burgeoning research areas such as computer science and biotechnology.

Zhu Lilan, minister of MST, stressed the importance of the timing of the project, saying it has vastly improved China's capacity to develop advanced technology crucial for national economic growth.

Biotechnology is one of the most successful areas, with much of the work being put into industrial use.

Breeding insect-resistant transgenic cotton and high-yielding hybrid rice has now spread across the country and benefits billions of farmers.

In information technology sectors, the domestically made DAWNING series of high performance computers have been regarded as an example of technological commercialization.

Although the series are not the fastest computers China has ever developed, they are the first of their kind to target commercial users.

The trend of commercializing research achievements has become rapidly popular among researchers under the 863 Project in the past few years.

Research in CMIS (contemporary manufacturing integrated system) has been closely associated with China's industrial upgrading since its beginning in 1987.

(China Daily 02/27/2001)